What if Autonomous Vehicles Became Mainstream?
The map of a potential transportation network in Geneva shows a world many of us might experience soon
When trying to imagine the future of mobility, people tend to view coming times through their own particular lenses. Or as designer and urbanist Dan Hill once commented:
“Put traffic engineers in charge of the street and you get traffic. If we put gardeners in charge of the street, we’d get gardens.” — Dan Hill
For instance, much of the discussion around autonomous vehicles tends to focus on the ideal scenario of traffic optimization. They skip over complex details in favor of the “big picture” of solving a problem. However, any decision-maker serious about evaluating the key opportunities of automation and investigating possible complications, must be able to look at details from multiple perspectives.
This is what design fiction is good at. It is good at uncovering the implications of today’s decisions. It reveals the ways futures could come to life and shows what ‘might comes soon’ looks like in the form of material objects — the tangible artifacts from the future. For example, the creation of a Quick Start Guide for a Self Driving Car reveals a myriad of topics that would need to be addressed to describe how to activate, switch into Uber mode, upgrade firmware, etcetera.
Like any other cities, Geneva has to deal with complex issues at the moment of anticipating the evolution of mobility (e.g. traffic, modes of transportation, energy sources). This is the reason why the Department of Mobility at the Canton of Geneva commissioned Nicolas Nova and myself to investigate their “what if” scenarios around automated driving. Using our loose design fiction process, we selected an artifact that could reveal the implications for urban policy.
We wanted a popular artifact, intelligible by a large audience. With the help of design JACOB ISRAEL VIADEST LARA, we created a foldable map of Geneva and brought it back from the future to be given out to the local public or tourists (Available in the Near Future Laboratory’s shop).
Technically, we imported OpenStreetMap layers into a Geographic Information System (QGIS) to organize and project the road segment data into a possible future. We iterated several times after discussing the results and Israel used Illustrator to polish the details (e.g. remove road segments, highlight potential consequences) and imagine new legends (e.g. urban canyons, levels of automated traffic).
The foldable map format also gives opportunities to add content alongside the actual street plan.
Here are some of the stories you might discover looking at the map:
The global AI company Level 5 joined Unireso, the local umbrella organization that coordinates the network of various modes of public transportation in and around the city. The company provides pick-up and drop-off stations for a fleet of on-demand autonomous vehicles.
In the arrival area of Geneva Airport, visitors receive a free circulation pass courtesy of Level 5. They can use it during the first 240 minutes of their stay to gain access to the optimized and mixed road network in the Greater Geneva area. That pass comes with a foldable map of the city that introduces the streets accommodating various modes of mobility, such as pedestrian zones and the coexistence of non-autonomous vehicles. The map also warns about safety issues. For instance, some of the narrow streets in the city create what’s called “urban canyons,” where autonomous vehicles struggle with connectivity issues.
The adoption of autonomous vehicles impacted the energy production in Switzerland. Political parties and the population clash, with some advocating for solar-powered solutions to reduce reliance on foreign fossil fuels, while others argue for efficient nuclear energy to support digital needs, potentially leading to investments in new power plants.
The presence of Level 5 gave rise to new job opportunities with the company on the look for roles like Remote Truck Drivers, Regional Vehicle Trainers, and Privacy and Cybersecurity Lawyers.
The intention for the Department of Mobility at the Canton of Geneva was to generate debates about the challenges that would be faced, the failures that might occur, the services that might emerge, the new kinds of signage and rules, etcetera. The map was used in the context of a local event about the future of the city, along with a series of talks and workshops on various topics public institutions have to deal with (places for kids, agricultural facilities, urbanism against climate change, etc.). In this context, it acted as a tangible future for a group of people with conflicting opinions to exchange point of views. We found out that the discussion revolves around two main topics : the way urban traffic may be reconfigured and redefine what is acceptable on certain streets (e.g. pedestrian movements, presence of non-autonomous vehicles), and the energy infrastructure needed for this technology to happen.
In this project, we imagined the near future as a territory. Maps provide a popular support to tell us how humans, technology and nature co-evolve. They make you travel to a future without actually going there. They bring a future into the hands of an audience with an objective to better understand the implications of today’s socio-technological developments might have on everybody’s life. Finally, our experiment of mixing today’s datasets with future narratives opens the doors of a new practice that uses techniques in Data Science not to predict what comes next, but to speculate on the implications of the work of Data Scientists (e.g. automation, augmented intelligence).
This transportation network map is a collaboration between Department of Mobility at the Canton of Geneva and Girardin & Nova. It sparked the creation of the Futures in Maps observatory.
